2021 | Bloober Team | Playstation 5
Bloober Team was originally founded in 2008 by Piotr Babieno and Piotr Bielatowicz. Their early years mostly centered around games developed for iOS, with their first true breakthrough being 2016’s Layers of Fear. A horror game following a painter’s obsession with creating his magnum opus. With the success of Layers of Fear, Bloober Team made a name for themselves as an upcoming studio for horror games. The following year they released Observer, featuring the actor Rutger Hauer. Both Layers of Fear and Observer showed the immense talent of the studio for creating surreal horror experiences. This was further bolstered by the release of Layers of Fear 2. From there the studio worked on the Blair Witch game, which had a lot more emphasis on jump scares to deliver its terror. This lead to the game being panned for its over reliance on said jump scares and lack of innovation on a little too-traditional mechanics.
Bloober Team took the criticism and feedback from their prior experiences with horror games to heart, and revived a shelved project. The Medium was originally intended as a release for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The original concept built upon the first person perspective mechanics from the Layers of Fear games, however the game was changed to fixed camera angles. This gave The Medium a look similar to the classic survival horror games, like Resident Evil, that inspired it. Development of the game proved difficult during the 2020 pandemic, as strict workspace health regulations prevented the full realization of the motion capture for the game. This was also the cause for the cancellation of the Polish dub for the game. Akira Yamaoka provided the soundtrack for the game, with his signature guitar sound being prominently featured in between the more atmospheric tracks. The Medium served as a bridge for Bloober to start working on the Silent Hill 2 remake.
The haunted hotel
The story of The Medium follows Miranda, a medium with the ability to walk in both the living world and the world of the dead. She is haunted by a recurring dream where a man shoots her on a pier in a forest. After the death of her foster father she gets a rather strange phone call of someone offering answers as to the nature of her abilities and the dreams. This leads her to the Nuwa resort, a rundown Cold War era hotel resort that was the staging ground for a massacre that never found a culprit. The resort serves as the backdrop for the first half of the game, and the parking lot is as an excellent introduction to what kind of game The Medium is in terms of gameplay. While primarily a point and click game, it does house a lot of the atmospheric elements of a traditional survival horror game. After making your way through the parking lot, you arrive in the lobby. Here we meet Sadness, a ghost of a child that knows Thomas, the mysterious caller.
And so the quest for Thomas begins with you exploring the various rooms surrounding the lobby. The hotel is beautifully designed and some of the areas are in a haunting state of decay. It is a perfectly rotten time capsule that preserved that era with overgrown moss and mold. The belongings of the hotel guests who fell victim to the Nuwa massacre provide an eerie and bloodied decor to serve as a constant companion to your search of the truth. Despite the palpable sense of isolation, you’re never truly alone, for monsters roam these corridors. At a certain point in the game we’re thrown completely into the otherworld, where we are introduced to The Maw. A voracious creature that wants to devour Miranda’s spirit so it can wear her body as a suit. He also likes to talk about doing that…. A lot!
As you explore the hotel, more clues start to unravel the narrative sweater woven by this game. It’s here where one of the game’s biggest flaws becomes a bit of a thorn in the player’s side. Throughout the game you can find memories of the victims, notes of the staff and owners of the hotel, and other clues that shed light on the massacre. However, the way this is done makes the game feel like a tangled mess. These clues create a messy web of different storylines that intersect at various points, but never in a way that quite makes sense. The writing on most of the notes you find also obfuscates and misleads to a frustrating degree. The Medium is relentless in this regard. In the end it all makes sense — Mainly because the game lacks the restraint not to outright tell you — however, it constantly feels like we’re taking a scenic route in the opposite direction.
After several confrontations with The Maw, we eventually make it out of the hotel into the forest surrounding the resort. Once again, the environmental design provides a staggering backdrop that oozes atmosphere. With ruined bunkers, parts of a mining operation and a complete aqueduct system breaking the tree line. The second half focuses more on Thomas, who we do eventually find, and Miranda. How they are connected to each other, and to this place. Once the story narrows the scope, there is a glimpse of a cohesive progression of the plot. In this part of the game you get to delve deeper into Miranda’s past, unravel her connection to the resort, as well as it trying to explain the origin of her abilities. It all leads to a conclusion that had a lot of people divided, but I found quite an interesting and bold idea.
Like Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, so too must a narrative carry the weight of a game that puts so much emphasis on it. The Medium tries to create a cryptic mystery, and then proceeds to stretch this mystery to a near breaking point. The game is designed in a way that allows players to sleuth through the clues and put the pieces together. The breadcrumbs left through the games collectible items will shine some light on it, but also try to obfuscate and mislead with a lot of false leads. While it might sound enticing, for me the game lacked a substantial amount of subtlety and restraint needed to pull this off in an effective way. There is a lot of potential here, mostly surrounding the world-building and characters. With a bit more holding back in the right places, and a careful examination of clues, The Medium could’ve been a great addition to the horror genre.
While the story of The Medium isn’t all that well executed, it does present an interesting narrative to explore. The real star of the show, however, is the environmental design of the game. The Medium has some stunning backdrops to enjoy, with the world of the dead being a particular standout. I loved traversing hallways and then having the realization that the walls were staring at me, as the ceiling was trying to claw at me. It’s a mesmerizing game to look at. Its ending felt a bit rushed and could’ve used a bit more attention to detail in the build-up to it. I strongly feel that if the developers reduced the scope of the story to a more focused and cohesive plot, it would’ve greatly increased not only the impact of the ending, but also the overall pacing of the game. For now it hides too much behind cryptic red herrings for me to get fully invested.
Not what it seems
It is important to understand that The Medium is not a traditional survival horror game, it is a point and click horror adventure that presents itself as a traditional survival horror game. This was one of the biggest misunderstandings I had going into this game. It might be due to the marketing surrounding the release, or just seeing the wrong snippets, but this is a very important distinction for me. Most of The Medium will have you explore the run down and abandoned Nuwa Resort, solving a bunch of puzzles. Well, It’s not so much puzzle solving and more Miranda blurting out the answers the second you get within a 20 meter radius of a puzzle piece. These puzzles are generally along the lines of find the missing pieces, or combine objects to form a key. However, the heart and soul of the game lies within Miranda’s ability to be both in the world of the living and the world of the dead at the same time.
Throughout the game Miranda will experience splitting headaches that literally split her consciousness in two. This also splits the screen in half, allowing you to navigate the resort as if you’re in both planes at once. As part of your arsenal of psychic abilities you can manipulate the environment in the spirit world to change the real world. Most of the puzzles in the game make use of this mechanic to create their problems to solve. The caveat is that if a place is blocked in the real world, it’s also blocked in the spirit world. Since both the real and spirit body needs to be able to maneuver through the environment, if a door blocks one the other can’t progress. Which brings us to the out of body experience. You can leave your physical body behind for a short amount of time to explore without the restrictions mentioned prior.
While most of the game is a web of puzzles that weave the narrative to its conclusion, you will run into a few monsters here and there. The big two being The Maw and The Hound. Both of these creatures will sometimes chase you down, or you’ll have to sneak by them. If I’m really honest, these are my least favorite segments of the game. The chase sequences have a lot of gotcha moments that instantly game over you, and the stealth sections are a nightmare to navigate thanks to their questionable camera angles. I appreciate the idea to create tension, but the only thing I was experiencing was a great deal of frustration.
The Medium has a few interesting ideas implemented in its mechanics, but it doesn’t fully commit to a single working formula. Instead you get a confusing mess of gameplay features that go from intriguing to jarring. I love the idea of The Maw being able to haunt you in the real world without a visible body, but the few times he appears it feels like a frustrating puzzle to solve. There is potential to create a really deep, and rich, atmosphere with these encounters by making it feel like The Maw is prowling in the background. However, I think that the game once again lacks the subtlety to pull that off effectively.
A medium experience
The Medium is, much like its name implies, a fairly middle of the road game. While both its premise and concepts show boundless promise, the execution of these remains somewhat lackluster. The chase sequences are a particular thorn in the games side, relying on cheap tricks to send the player to a quick game-over screen. The game presents itself as a traditional survival horror title, but it has more in common with games like Syberia than Silent Hill. The writing of the game also suffers from being needlessly cryptic for too long. This makes the final revelations surrounding the story somewhat anti-climactic, as most players will have figured it out long before reaching the end. The writing itself also fails to create any sense of tension over the existing frustrations surrounding the gameplay. The Maw’s lines in particular is that specific type of corny that throws any sense of subtlety out of the window in favor of a sequel to Freddy vs. Jason. This got to a point where I could predict the next line with a decent amount of accuracy.
Now with the harshest critiques out of the way — The Medium has a lot to like, once you’ve recovered from tripping over bumps in the road. The visual design of the environments is easily the biggest highlight the game has to offer. The Nuwa resort is beautifully rendered, with its haunting empty halls beckoning the player to explore them. Even more so when shifting to the spirit realm. The level of detail in the other side is nothing short of incredible at times. One minute you walk through a run-down hotel, the next you suddenly realize that the ceiling is reaching out and the walls are covered in faces that move ever so slightly. The shot direction for the cutscene is great in certain parts of the game, I just wish that the split mode would offer a bit more synchronicity. It becomes a bit distracting to keep track of two different camera angles showing the same scene, making it difficult to keep track of the screen at times.
The Medium is very much a like it or hate it type of game, with me somewhere in the middle of the pack. There are moments during which the game shows immaculate understanding of how to build suspense and atmosphere, only for The Maw to show up with the desire to wear your skin like a suit. Once I finally settled for a point and click horror adventure, instead of a survival horror game, the game started clicking with me a lot more. Some of the puzzles are well designed, but nothing is too complex. If you can’t figure out how to progress, you’ve likely missed something in the room. I also loved the shifting to the otherworld mechanics. It did take a good amount of getting used to the split screen, but it offered a unique approach to exploring the resort. There are a lot of clever ideas around this mechanic, like only being able to see The Maw on the other side, but I think there is a lot of room to do more with it. I would’ve liked a bit more of the ghosts, maybe through the victims of the massacre, to really make the narrative more immersive. For now, the game offers a lot of neat things to enjoy, but prepare to get frustrated with some of the less fun aspects. It’s a game that feels like the training arc that lead from Layers of Fear to the Silent Hill 2 remake. The Medium is a very okay horror game.
Troy Baker’s of Fear/10
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